Innovation is an important element to successfully navigating the ever-changing waters of today’s technology-laden financial services environment. Open innovation is a particularly compelling form. With open innovation, one organization partners with another organization or individual who has already developed a specific technology or who is more advanced along the developmental path of that technology.
A recent white paper I authored, “Reimagined Banking in the Age of the Consumer,” highlights open innovation as it relates to financial institutions. Below is an excerpt taking a closer look at the value of open innovation.
There’s great potential in “the crowd.” We see it in the trends of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, each of which can significantly impact several different areas of a business. Take marketing, for example. In what was an epic success for Doritos, the company went beyond its internal creative army, beyond its external marketing agency, and tapped the American public — arguably the entire world — for its next great Super Bowl commercial.
Beyond giving the Doritos marketing staff access to the world’s creative bank, the crowdsourcing strategy invigorated the way the company engages with consumers. Consumers are no longer considered an audience; rather, they are seen as active producers and distributors of brand content. It’s been such a successful effort, Doritos CMO Ann Mukherjee says leveraging the creativity of thousands of fans is a permanent strategy…
Open innovation happens in one of three ways: outside-in, inside- out or a coupling of the two. At TMG, we have achieved great success in innovation through the marriage of outside-in and inside-out strategies, namely through strategic partnerships. Take our proprietary, patent-pending reporting and cardholder data tool Springboard. Built on the bones of First Data’s open architecture, Springboard now solves a series of problems for both internal and client teams. Our new mobile app, See2Pay, is another example. A wearable payments app developed by our team, this innovation stands on the foundations of Google Glass and the Dwolla payments network.
To download the white paper “Reimagined Banking in the Age of the Consumer,” visit www.themembersgroup.com/innovation.